Dear Family and Friends,
Well, as you may be able to tell or maybe already know, I have been transferred from Catanzaro to Caserta. It is close to Napoli (Naples in English). I am very excited to go but at the same time very happy. Our ward will be half American and half Italian because of an American base that is in our area. It will be like being close to home again so we'll see how it goes.Well it has been a great last week here in Catanzaro. It wasn't quite as successful number wise as we would have liked but I believe Anziano G and I can both say that it was full of hard work. We both felt the spirit many times this week and we know it is because of the hard work going on here.
As we have been taught so clearly in this past year we have been striving to really follow-up on everything. Seeing as how it was the end of the month we decided we need to make sure that we followed-up with our less-actives. We were able to help out one less-active who has had back surgery in the not so distant past but wasn't physically able to get up and move things around in her house. We helped her son with some of the manual labor just in time to make it back before English course.I think this really strengthened our relationship with her and I believe that in the near future they will start becoming strong again. They just need that little push to get them over the hump.
We found an amazing link this past week that showed us such an incredible miracle that we felt so very blessed. The son in the less-active family is 22 years old. He has been coming to church for the past few months or so without missing. We have been thinking about him and how we can get him onto a mission because we really think that this could help firstly, his family come back to church, and secondly, the future of this branch and the strength of it. Up until this week we haven't been able to come up with anything that really sparks his interest in going on a mission but this past week we figured out what might help. It turns out that one of our investigators, the one who teaches English at school, knows this family and in particular this boy. She told us that he has always stuck out to her as someone different, someone who had morals that most kids don't have in these days. We made the connection that this is his path to the mission. If he can watch the conversion of someone he knows and can participate in the teaching and even the baptism/conversion process himself, this might spark the desire to serve the Lord full time.
We have been fasting and praying for this opportunity and we hope this might be the future here. It was not by chance that we stopped this women and she had the desire to learn about the gospel and it is not by chance that she has always looked to this one man as an example or almost a beacon to her. I hope with all my heart that this is the plan of the Lord but He knows best. I have seen examples of his knowledge and wisdom every day a little bit more vividly for my entire life.
I won't lie, I was a little bit caught off guard with the transfer call as I thought I would probably stay, my time here has really been great and I have learned a lot. There is a proverb about Catanzaro that says "you come in crying because you don't want to be there, but you leave crying as well because you don't want to leave" . That is definitely the case here although I didn't come in crying because I knew nothing of the place before coming but I am beyond excited to serve in Caserta as it has been a secret dream of mine to serve there my whole mission.
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